Challenges and Opportunities in Managing the World’s ForestsRFF Seminar November 5, 2009

Forests have long been valued for their many attributes – providing timber, livelihood, watershed protection, natural habitat, and beauty. Forests also play a role in the global climate cycle by sequestering carbon and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions, leading to a prominent role for forest management in any approach to climate policy. Improving forest measurement and monitoring is a necessary step and one that complements numerous initiatives to help shape policy design by governments, philanthropic and other nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector.

At this seminar, our panelists linked data to policy with several examples:

Challenges in measuring the state of forests and the need for new institutions to provide better forest data

Development of a forest carbon index to inform understanding of forest carbon credits

The role of forest carbon management in alleviating poverty in developing countries

Recent recommendations of the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests

Video and Audio

Note: Sound on the video and audio is low-quality due to technical difficulties.